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Why do black and white films have better lighting than modern ones?
Posted on 10/20/18 at 10:59 pm
Posted on 10/20/18 at 10:59 pm
Compare It's a Wonderful Life and the Universal Horror movies to things like Solo and Mr Robot. Shouldn't the addition of color make things stand out more?
3
Posted on 10/20/18 at 11:02 pm to JabarkusRussell
Better lighting? I was watching the original Universal frankenstein just last night and it seemed like every shot it was obvious they were in a lit studio. Looks awful, but that’s the charm.
Posted on 10/20/18 at 11:10 pm to JabarkusRussell
Black and white film takes a shite ton to light...and time and effort.
I believe because it is more difficult to light that way more attention is paid and more effort...and you can really play with the lighting in black and white films more than color. So in essence, you either light really well and things stand out or you don't light well and you can't see shite in black and white films. It's light or no light.
Color has much more leeway...you can be lazy...hell you can use just daylight and candles as Kubrick did in Barry Lyndon to be creative...and add an aesthetic.
If you used candlelight in a black and white film, you'd see fuzzy images against a black backdrop.
If you watch black and white in some films if they've been remastered to your modern TV you can see beads of sweat on the actor's faces, that's how much lighting is needed.
And to the general point...modern movies do seem underlit. I don't get it.
The remake of True Grit was a prime example of this. The campfire scenes at night, you can't see shite.
So many movies are just too damn dark.
I believe because it is more difficult to light that way more attention is paid and more effort...and you can really play with the lighting in black and white films more than color. So in essence, you either light really well and things stand out or you don't light well and you can't see shite in black and white films. It's light or no light.
Color has much more leeway...you can be lazy...hell you can use just daylight and candles as Kubrick did in Barry Lyndon to be creative...and add an aesthetic.
If you used candlelight in a black and white film, you'd see fuzzy images against a black backdrop.
If you watch black and white in some films if they've been remastered to your modern TV you can see beads of sweat on the actor's faces, that's how much lighting is needed.
And to the general point...modern movies do seem underlit. I don't get it.
The remake of True Grit was a prime example of this. The campfire scenes at night, you can't see shite.
So many movies are just too damn dark.
This post was edited on 10/20/18 at 11:11 pm
Posted on 10/20/18 at 11:53 pm to mizzoubuckeyeiowa
quote:
Color has much more leeway...you can be lazy...hell you can use just daylight and candles as Kubrick did in Barry Lyndon to be creative...and add an aesthetic.
It has nothing to do with color or black and white, it has everything to do with the film's "speed" or iso or asa, whatever term you want to use.
Older films were very very slow (meaning they couldn't "see" that much light), therefore you had to light the absolute shite out of a scene, especially at night or indoors.
In fact the first color films (Think wizard of Oz) were actually far more difficult to light than B&W.
There's old stories of actors falling out under the numerous lights in those first major color and technicolor films.
The reason Kubrick got away with it in Barry Lyndon was two fold. 1: film stocks after the late 1960s became faster and 2: he was able to get his hands on those NASA, insanely fast (let more light in) lenses, which were 0.7 f-stop. Major production lenses today, still aren't that fast.
Old time films also did not use "practical" lighting, meaning they all used a traditional setup of key lights and offset lights to highlight an actors face rather starkly.
Its what gives all those old movie actors that angelic type look. When the films stocks got a little faster, guys like Kubrick began using actual lights within the scene (lamps, string lights, etc) as the primary sources of the lighting.
Another reson old BW films had that look of "better lighting" was especially due to the more natural contrast when you only have shades of black and white as a color.
You can't compare anything made with modern digital cameras either, simply beause of the massive latitude and low light capabilities you have with movie cameras now.
You can unferlight the hell out of a scene and still see what's going on because of the tech now. I think the reasoning is for a more "natural" look. This is especially true at night outdoors.
Posted on 10/21/18 at 12:16 am to Jack Ruby
Quality and informative post. I was just going off of B&W experience and not considering the films being made were in 16mm for school projects...and the massive amount of lighting needed.
Posted on 10/21/18 at 12:30 am to Jack Ruby
quote:
he was able to get his hands on those NASA, insanely fast (let more light in) lenses, which were 0.7 f-stop
Why do these let more light in?
Posted on 10/21/18 at 12:31 am to JabarkusRussell
quote:
Compare It's a Wonderful Life and the Universal Horror movies to things like Solo and Mr Robot
not exactly apples to apples here.
Posted on 10/21/18 at 12:50 am to Jack Ruby
They finally introduced color to film yet nowadays you can't even see it because of the lighting and desaturation.
Posted on 10/21/18 at 10:21 pm to MidnightVibe
quote:
Quality and informative post. I was just going off of B&W experience and not considering the films being made were in 16mm for school projects...and the massive amount of lighting needed.
Yeah, that's kind of dealing with exposure, too and the need to be more precise with certain stocks. I just remember reading stuff about how painstakingly difficult it was to light scenes for old time color films and how much more expensive and difficult it was on the actors.
It's kind of why the entire look of films began to become much more natural and gritty in the 1960s and 70s. They just didn't need the same kind of lighting like before. Now it's even more extreme.
...
quote:
Why do these let more light in?
Essentially, the lens is able to open its aperture (or iris as some call it) to let in more light through its construction, size, and design of the glass elements inside the housing.
Those lenses were only made in one focal length and were absolutely huge for a cinema camera:
It's the only way a film back then could have been made with just candlelight as your light source. The huge drawback, though, is that when you open a lens up that wide, it produces razor thin depth of field, meaning a subject is only in focus in one particular spot for the lens.
I think the actors in Barry Lyndon only had a 2-inch window for front to back movement in order to stay in focus. It was so difficult, the actors could barely move in those scenes and they had a in house video monitor off to the side to make sure their faces were in focus during filming.
With digital cameras today, they could film that scene with very little problem because of how good they are in low light. In 1975 though, it was damn near impossible.
It what makes the cinematography in that movie so good.
This post was edited on 10/21/18 at 10:30 pm
Posted on 10/21/18 at 11:43 pm to Jack Ruby
Yeah now it makes sense, never thought much of it but black and white.
But you've provided a wealth of knowledge.
I did a summer one year at USC film school - they used to offer summer film school courses even if you weren't a student - I was still in high school.
They gave you an 8MM after film sessions and study of certain films...Good, Bad, Ugly, M, Graduate (for continuety shots) etc. M was a huge focus, when they taught us black and white and shadows and light, they loved that movie.
But I just thought of it as black and white being a kid. But the 8MM cameras they gave us (apparently some USC alum found about 5,000 of these in some barn in France in the 1960's and helped USC become the preeminent film school apart from its location by donating them.) So every student gets a camera...go make a 3 minute movie. You could just point and shoot in 8MM like any home movie enthusiast.
But when they asked us to make a 5-minute 16MM film...the lighting was insane. It took hours to light a simple scene...they rent these lights for you but you have to set them up and light the scene yourself, every student actor had different lighting. It took 3 days to shoot a 5 minute movie. And it was still murky in B&W 16MM. The 8MM looked better. But some students got the lighting right and it looked great.
I guess I always chucked it up to the medium (black and white 16MM vs. 8MM color) and not film speed.
It's amazing to the cost, this was years ago but apparently when simple light cost $500 an hour to rent. Just a simple light that is acting as the lamp in the movie.
But you've provided a wealth of knowledge.
I did a summer one year at USC film school - they used to offer summer film school courses even if you weren't a student - I was still in high school.
They gave you an 8MM after film sessions and study of certain films...Good, Bad, Ugly, M, Graduate (for continuety shots) etc. M was a huge focus, when they taught us black and white and shadows and light, they loved that movie.
But I just thought of it as black and white being a kid. But the 8MM cameras they gave us (apparently some USC alum found about 5,000 of these in some barn in France in the 1960's and helped USC become the preeminent film school apart from its location by donating them.) So every student gets a camera...go make a 3 minute movie. You could just point and shoot in 8MM like any home movie enthusiast.
But when they asked us to make a 5-minute 16MM film...the lighting was insane. It took hours to light a simple scene...they rent these lights for you but you have to set them up and light the scene yourself, every student actor had different lighting. It took 3 days to shoot a 5 minute movie. And it was still murky in B&W 16MM. The 8MM looked better. But some students got the lighting right and it looked great.
I guess I always chucked it up to the medium (black and white 16MM vs. 8MM color) and not film speed.
It's amazing to the cost, this was years ago but apparently when simple light cost $500 an hour to rent. Just a simple light that is acting as the lamp in the movie.
Posted on 10/22/18 at 12:12 am to mizzoubuckeyeiowa
quote:
It's amazing to the cost, this was years ago but apparently when simple light cost $500 an hour to rent. Just a simple light that is acting as the lamp in the movie.
Please explain why it was $500 an hour...
Posted on 10/22/18 at 2:11 pm to jg8623
Firs off, the markup for Hollywood grade filming and lighting equipment is beyond astronomical. They can do it because there has been a market rate that high forever and outside of about 3 or 4 companies in the world, no one else makes equipment on that level.
Let's just take the newst major Hollywood digital cameras. Probably the Arri Alexa 65 or Alexa LF that was just released.
The 65 isn't even available for purchase and can only be rented and an LF probably costs at leat $100,000.
Yes, 100K just for the camera... That doesn't even include lenses (which for a set at $15,000-$20,000 per lens could easily run $200K or more) or lighting.
So think about it, if a rental house is buying some of this type of equipment, it has major major funds already invested...so it has to make its money back by charging huge rental fees.
Now for a $2,000 camera, the rental may be $25-35 per day... But just imagine what the charge would be per day for $150,000 worth of equipment? Your probably looking at thousands and thousands of dollars a day.
But if you're some ultra low budget filmmaker, you may only need to rent that kind of camera for a weekend, so that's probably where a lot of their market is, too.
Yeah if you didn't meter the scene and know your film speed, you'd be screwed and totally taking a shot in the dark (no pun intended) for your final product.
I can only imagine trying to do a shoot as a teenager with 8mm or 16mm with the limited knowledge most kids would have at the time. I still take film still photography on occasion and it's still tricky sometimes and you blow shots (but that's with modern film stocks too)
It's totally different now.
You could hand out an iPhone which does all that stuff automatically now, and just shoot away and focus so much more on the scene itself than worry about the technical stuff.
That's also why I always thought of filmmaking as more of a skill than an art. Yes, you have to have artistic ability to have an eye for shots and especially if you write and act, etc...
But the directing process is much more like a head football coach than anything. You have to have the vision and instincts to see whats going on real time... But you better damn well have a deep technical knowledge of the medium too.
Let's just take the newst major Hollywood digital cameras. Probably the Arri Alexa 65 or Alexa LF that was just released.
The 65 isn't even available for purchase and can only be rented and an LF probably costs at leat $100,000.
Yes, 100K just for the camera... That doesn't even include lenses (which for a set at $15,000-$20,000 per lens could easily run $200K or more) or lighting.
So think about it, if a rental house is buying some of this type of equipment, it has major major funds already invested...so it has to make its money back by charging huge rental fees.
Now for a $2,000 camera, the rental may be $25-35 per day... But just imagine what the charge would be per day for $150,000 worth of equipment? Your probably looking at thousands and thousands of dollars a day.
But if you're some ultra low budget filmmaker, you may only need to rent that kind of camera for a weekend, so that's probably where a lot of their market is, too.
quote:
I guess I always chucked it up to the medium (black and white 16MM vs. 8MM color) and not film speed.
Yeah if you didn't meter the scene and know your film speed, you'd be screwed and totally taking a shot in the dark (no pun intended) for your final product.
I can only imagine trying to do a shoot as a teenager with 8mm or 16mm with the limited knowledge most kids would have at the time. I still take film still photography on occasion and it's still tricky sometimes and you blow shots (but that's with modern film stocks too)
It's totally different now.
You could hand out an iPhone which does all that stuff automatically now, and just shoot away and focus so much more on the scene itself than worry about the technical stuff.
That's also why I always thought of filmmaking as more of a skill than an art. Yes, you have to have artistic ability to have an eye for shots and especially if you write and act, etc...
But the directing process is much more like a head football coach than anything. You have to have the vision and instincts to see whats going on real time... But you better damn well have a deep technical knowledge of the medium too.
Posted on 10/22/18 at 2:37 pm to mizzoubuckeyeiowa
quote:
And to the general point...modern movies do seem underlit. I don't get it.
The remake of True Grit was a prime example of this. The campfire scenes at night, you can't see shite.
So many movies are just too damn dark.
Game of Thrones was one of the worst examples of it. I basically decided not to watch that series early because it was so bad.
Posted on 10/22/18 at 5:42 pm to Jack Ruby
quote:
Let's just take the newst major Hollywood digital cameras. Probably the Arri Alexa 65 or Alexa LF that was just released. The 65 isn't even available for purchase and can only be rented and an LF probably costs at leat $100,000. Yes, 100K just for the camera... That doesn't even include lenses (which for a set at $15,000-$20,000 per lens could easily run $200K or more) or lighting. So think about it, if a rental house is buying some of this type of equipment, it has major major funds already invested...so it has to make its money back by charging huge rental fees. Now for a $2,000 camera, the rental may be $25-35 per day... But just imagine what the charge would be per day for $150,000 worth of equipment? Your probably looking at thousands and thousands of dollars a day.
I totally understand the cost of that high end equipment and the mark up and all that. I was just asking about a simple light that is used as a lamp in a scene costing $500 an hour. For a 10 hour day that's $5,000 for a lamp light????
This post was edited on 10/22/18 at 5:44 pm
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